Railway
Car
by Patrick Kalahar
The
empty railway car
abandoned
on a siding
complains
of neglect,
but
rusting steel rails
hunkering
in their bed of stone
are
driven to silence
by
stakes of iron.
The
tall grasses bend
eastward
toward the sun
in
obeisance or mockery,
their
thin, delicate blades
licking
like tongues
against
wheel and car
rasping
tales of death—
or
perhaps it is only the wind
The
railway car denies death.
It
holds within
every
journey it has taken,
the
silent thoughts and voices
of
every passenger are inscribed,
eternal
in air
demanding—
it
is not
only
the
wind
Patrick
Kalahar is a used & rare
bookseller who lives and works with his poet/novelist wife Jenny in an old
schoolhouse in Elwood, Indiana. He performs readings of and dresses as Edgar
Allan Poe, participates in local poetry groups, and was interviewed and
appeared in a Public Broadcasting television documentary about the Indiana
folk-poet James Whitcomb Riley. He is a book restorer and collector.